Belated Vegan Eats…Austin, Texas edition

Better late than never, right?

Pretty much. I’ve been devouring travel blogs lately and finding them incredibly encouraging and useful (& hilarious) while researching an upcoming adventure, so the way I see it, if this inspires just one more person to head to Austin for vegan tacos, then all the better. That’s kind of the point.

I mean, I could continue to let these photos sit in my Flickr, horribly lacking tags in a giant album and being forgotten, or I could totally share them and reinforce the growing opinion that Austin is the new vegan ‘it’ city. Because, frankly, if the following gives you a quick, mult-day glance into its current vegan scene, (which has no doubt, grown since my time in February) you’ll see that it’s true.

In the footsteps of South by Southwest, it’s undeniably become a huge vegan travel destination, arguably replacing Portland as the ‘mecca’, if you will. My visit with team Vida Vegan Headquarters is now months behind me, and there’s this before in my life on the matter of (and hunger for) vegan tacos…and margaritas. The growing vegan options in Austin, TX have such a buzz to them, rapidly growing both casually and grander; both key signs that your city has become the vegan must (and as someone who moved to Portland in 2004, trust me on that!)

So, this may be shamefully turned shamelessly belated, but with judging this weekend’s Pop Up! Taco Shop! (the inspiration is apparent) ahead of me, the timing was inevitable. I barely scratched the surface of Austin’s vegan options and by the final evening, already deeply regretted not making time for at least ten more taco breaks.

Vivo

After a full day of connecting flights and some shopping (and we’re vegan, so that means Whole Foods for local snacks), we had a lovely dinner on the patio at Vivo, where I never wanted the chips & salsa to end, until my Puffy Taco plate arrived. At that point, I was content. So content I didn’t dare order a second cucumber margarita.

Our first experience of Austin’s chips & salsa lifestyle remains my favorite of the all too short trip.

Refreshing cucumber margarita, Vivo

Whole Foods

Earlier that day, we perused Whole Foods (where it was born!) for goodies and shampoo. We didn’t “Sip & Shop” until a few days later, shockingly, but as we learned in Chicago, the option is a goddamn delight.

Snack time. Not quite a Red Rabbit doughnut, or a taco, but with a side of hot sauce, it held me over til dinner.

Austin, TX: Where I did not expect to be tempted to snack on California-made, New York-style pickles.

Which brings me to our second day, where we met up with friends for a Vida Vegan meet-up dinner at Vegan Nom’s Rockin’ Vegan Tacos, which was apparently a must. I’ll agree! I’ll get to our lunch that day (a day of location scouting), shortly. Don’t mind me, months later, for the bit of random order.

Vegan Nom/Rockin’ Vegan Tacos

It’s all good with good tacos. And BYOB microbrews.

Instagram photo via @jdfunks

I went with the enormous El Diablo, an incredibly, and thankfully fiery, house soyrizo-packed taco. Doesn’t it look like a burrito!?!

The flavors took me everywhere I could possibly want to go with so much welcome heat: no hot sauces required (but rest assured, they were certainly sampled).

Take home dessert from Vegan Noms: chocolate-covered peanut butter bombs.

After dinner, our friends took us to another must-must-must (must-must-must!): Sweet Ritual for vegan ice cream sundaes.

Sweet Ritual

Evidently run by a former Portlander, it was a charming shoppe with creamy vegan ice cream and creative toppings. I don’t quite remember what I ordered anymore besides the giant gobs of salty cookie dough (which I bizarrely could not finish), but like I said, it was a pretty dang must experience for vegan ice cream fanatics.

S. Congress Ave.

Just look at that charmingly indie American Apparel market…

Wheatsville Co-op

We visited the home of addictive and world-famous popcorn tofu at least twice, which I can be sure of because I have pictures of two very different tacos and made my way through even more of their kombucha section.

This is right before I got a little bit food blogger crazy with a camera in one hand and coffee cup in the other and sloshed the deli case…

I’m usually a tad more reserved these days, but Austin had me so incredibly excited about vegan food, non-stop, and I couldn’t stop.

Wheatsville Co-op: breakfast taco & coffee break

I don’t think I can count how many times I’ve made scrambled tofu & potato breakfast tacos (and not limited to the mornings) since this trip! Here’s the most recent.

Breakfast!Taco! House vegan chorizo, potato & hot sauce, to be exact.

Enjoying that local kombucha scene

Add these fascinating krauts & kimchi (another one from California, in fact) to the list of fermented products that caught my eye in Texas…

Another afternoon taco lunch at Wheatsville, with what had to be the freshest and most vegan taco of our visit:

Of course, we threw some more popcorn tofu into the meal, and more buffalo popcorn ‘fu to take with us.

Cornucopia

As you can see, the menu specifies which flavors are vegan. I picked up the savoury Spirulina, Salted Toffee, Garlic & Herb and Birthday Cake (Note: this last one is vegan before they add a final ingredient – so ask the staff if there’s any in-progress in the back) varieties.

Spider House Cafe

One night, our friends took us to Spider House Cafe & Daily Juice bar for fresh cocktails & mocktails, again, on a really stellar outdoor patio.

It marked my second housemade cucumber margarita experience of the trip (with Vivo’s taking the title)

Yeah, it wasn’t Friday.

For our final night, we poured over the amazing vegan taco spreadsheet a few of our local friends, Smurfy, Chris & Crystal, had put together for our arrival, and decided to start the evening’s taco & margarita farewell tour at the fabulous La Condesa on 2nd Street.

Icenhauer’s

Curra’s Grill

One of the delightfully sweet & sour margaritas (and live chip-action)

Janessa and I shared the Vegetarian Taco Plate .We went for the strikingly red chile tortillas and both refried and black beans. I really appreciated the chock-full-of-vegetables aspect of the tacos.

Bonus avocado margarita in the back left

Smurfy’s Vegan Tamales

Course #2, I mean Margarita Dos

Team Taco contemplates our next move (and I think to myself, I can totally fit in one more taco, two if we share).

Violet Crown Social Club & more food carts

Not exactly tacos, but since our next stop was the Violet Crown Social Club, team VVC decides to share a Detroit…style….pizza!?! The New Yorker in me was reluctant, but decides to keep up the late night food cart & bar tradition and try out Via 313.

Honestly, I’m all for trying new cuisines, and they had me at the fortunate absence of a certain d-cheese.

At this point, it was officially getting late, and we had a flight in the morning, so my final Texas refreshment that grand evening was a break from all the agave with this easy Peacemaker from Austin Beerworks.

However, confusingly, this is still not a taco.

We then headed over to Cheer Up Charlie’s for a little more excitement (and surely, tacos).

Of course, it was time for a final snack, since time was wasting in Texas, so we headed outside to check out the options (do forgive the crap photo, it goes with the story at the time).

Arlo’s was certainly tempting, but veggies burgers aren’t exactly a ‘small bite’. Of course, I now catch the part where it states, “TACOS”.

Sadly, we googled a bit and asked around, but couldn’t find tacos within the immediate area, so it was down to Me So Hungry for a final bite.

Fat Elvis Rolls (minus the honey glaze). I didn’t get to try these, but they looked great and were so hot-from-a-food cart.

How many hot sauces did you bring back?! I keep on wanting to buy different hot sauces, but then I realize my kitchen is small and my bottles go a long way. I recently got a bottle of Oregon hot sauce (Secret Aardvark?), which we really like, and we also have a way too hot habanero hot sauce that’s still tasty, although deadly, as well as some Frank’s Red Hot. I guess that’s enough for now.